I'm a cinematic curmudgeon with somewhat discerning tastes that generally run counter to the appetite of popular culture which is often laden with fat and gristle that satisfies momentarily only leaving you queasy afterwards. I prefer "My Dinner With Andre" over the franchise of remakes like "Mission Impossible," "Miama Vice," "Planet of The Apes," or the new Gilligan's Island, which they've renamed, "Lost", for some reason.
At any rate, don't mean to come across adolescently (no, that's not a word so don't go breaking the English language by spreading that around) but I just saw KING KONG tonight in the fabulous Cinerama Dome in Hollywood and it totally rocked! Kong kicks the proverbial ass, dude! Ahem, now that I've dispensed with that bit of droll pubescent passion, I can move on to the more serious exegesis of Jackson's homage and elegy to the golden age of cinema.
The question that agonizes any film aesthete these days who has not bought into the cynicism and avarice of film studios that justify all remakes as a triumph of nostalgia and potential cash cow is: why are there so many fucking remakes?!? Where are all the original script ideas? Why remake something that wasn't so great to begin with? Or even worse, why remake something that was originally superb but through some unfathomable hubris remake it with contemporary flourishes as if all things current are somehow better than anything old?
Jackson's remake of King Kong is not one of these flacid Hollywood marketing ploys to sell more burgers through action figures you can only get exclusively at McDonald's. No, Kong is sooo much more. If there were a procedural manual defining the reasons and steps necessary to pick and develop a film to remake, Kong would be a paradigmatic study. Why remake? One, you can add dimensions like further backstory, better character development and themes to a remake. Two, film technology can not just enhance the original concept but fulfill and expand on visual limitations that the original may have been restricted on.
Kong achieves these two fundamental tasks. There are many publicly available reviews of the film that go into more synopsis and specifics so I won't bore you with that direction. However, it is noteworthy to mention that most of the film is spent in backstory on Skull Island where Kong resides deep in the primordial forest where dinosaurs and Buick-sized bugs slither about. This is the most enjoyable and thrilling part of the movie. We get an on-the-edge-of-your-seat thrill ride through relentless chase scenes and narrow escapes that unfold one after the other without let up except for brief moments of tender bonding between Anne Darrow and Kong. Now sometimes this much action can be emotionally and visually exhausting and in many films that attempt to throw all manner of action at the audience as if it were a military campaign to "shock and awe", end up bliding us as the visual information comes in a flurry that is almost indecipherable and much of it blurred for effect. Not so in Kong.
There is an amazing scene early in their journey on Skull Island where they are essentially "running with the bulls" except the bulls have been replaced with T. rex's. The characters are running and being run over by beasts that tower over them and eventually end up in a dogpile of prehistoric creatures. This would normally have been visually confusing and lacking credibility but the FX here are carried out flawlessly as we see humans zig-zagging beneath the T. rex's feet in an almost comedic and inhuman pace. Everything is crystaline and something you could visually follow as if you were right there with them.
For anyone who hasn't appreciated Naomi Watts, now is the time to walk to the proverbial stage with flowers in hand. With the realization that much of her emotional responses in the film had to be conjured up next to an animatronic, furry hand or in front of some blue-screen, it's amazing to see her pull off some of the nuances and emotionally credible moments that we see. Particularly noteworthy is the expression on her face when she is first found by Jack Driscoll as she sleeps gently in Kong's hand. She's able to communicate several feelings and thoughts as Jack approaches her steathily so as not to wake the slumbering beast. First is a look of slight surprise at Jack's sudden appearance, then a second of relief at seeing her rescuer, which is then immediately followed by optimism turned to supressed alarm for Jack doesn't know all that's at stake here by removing Kong's new found princess toy from his grasp. She emotes the mixed feelings of newly discovered comfort with Kong, her forest protector, and the familiar attraction she shared momentarily with Jack Driscoll, her artistic inspiration and human suitor. She is torn and all this shows on her face in only a few seconds really. Marvellous.
The climactic and iconographic fulfillment of the movie is the image of Kong atop the Empire State Building (or some facsimile thereof), beating his chest as he fends off biplanes that shoot at him, never understanding his misunderstood genius or gentle heart. As his sad eyes knowingly look one last time into Darrow's, beast and beauty understand that this Depression-era world has no room for heart or humanity. As Darrow mentions to Carl Denham (Jack Black) in an earlier scene, "nothing good lasts in this world."
I think Ebert says it nicely in this quote from his review of the film:
" 'King Kong' is a magnificent entertainment. It is like the flowering of all the possibilities in the original classic film. Computers are used not merely to create special effects, but also to create style and beauty, to find a look for the film that fits its story."
Ebert also offers a fuller analysis of the relationship dynamics between Darrow and Kong. I agree with him that Watts characterization gives their relationship a playfullness that moves away from the nervous suspicion that it borders on something resembling bestiality. In Jackson's King Kong, they are kindred spirits victimized by a cruel and heartless human world where capitalism crushes the weak and avarice passes for ambition.
My final thought is a disclaimer and criticism of this film. The frightening aboriginal primitives of Skull Island are a throwback to bygone days of white European supremacy as it spread its tentacles of expansionism and colonization over the so called dark corridors of the world. The island natives are cartoonishly and grossly without any redemption and depicted as mindless primitives practicing a culture of death and mysticism centered around sacrifices to Kong. This is supposedly somewhere in the vicinity of the South Pacific and they are dark skinned with bones in their noses like the utterly racist depictions of African tribes people that flourished when such racism was unabashed. Perhaps Jackson is keeping to the mythology of the period and the original sensationalism of the story but it's hard not to feel uncomfortably like you're participating in stereotypes and dichotomies rehashed from empire building days of yonder where people who neither looked or acted in the way of Western ideals were simply hated or vilified.
A shipmate aboard the steamer is found reading Joseph Conrad's "Heart of Darkness" as they approach the Island. It's an apt reference since the journey they make is one filled with self-serving aims that involve a kind of fetishism of the "darkness" which is a multiple entendre alluding to darkness in the hearts and deeds of men, literal darkness, myopia, the exoticism of dark continents, and of course, dark pigmented cultures who don't share our value system. Back aboard the Nellie with Marlow, Conrad muses:
"The conquest of the earth, which mostly means the taking it away from those who have a different complexion or slightly flatter noses than ourselves, is not a pretty thing when you look into it too much. What redeems it is the idea only. An idea at the back of it; not a sentimental pretense but an idea; and an unselfish belief in the idea-- something you can set up, and bow down before, and offer a sacrifice to..."
